The complete idiot's guide to classical music (51 page)

Unlike some artists who are worldwide successes in their teens, Nilsson’s career unfolded slowly. She sang her first operatic role, Agathe in Weber’s
Der Freischutz
at age 28 when the original soprano canceled at the last moment, and it was another year (and another cancellation) before she appeared as Lady Macbeth in the Verdi opera. Only then did things start moving. In 1948 she drew her first Wagnerian role, Senta in
The Flying Dutchman
; a few years later, her Brunnhilde sent up international alerts, and she soon was repeating the part in Munich, Vienna, and the Bayreuth Festival, where she would appear regularly from 1954 until 1970.

Her American operatic debut, again as Brunnhilde, was in San Francisco, and such was her enormous success that her Met debut in 1959 (as Isolde) was front-page news. So, was her return 20 years later to the company after a five year absence, first in a gala performance, then for a series of
Elektra
performances in the Strauss opera, the first of which resulted in a 30-minute standing ovation.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
During a piano rehearsal of
Tristan
at the Vienna State Opera, Birgit Nilsson’s string of pearls snapped, and conductor Herbert von Karajan helped scoop them up for her. Having apparently exhausted his supply of chivalry, Karajan asked the soprano whether the pearls were stage jewelry or real stuff “bought from your phenomenal fees at La Scala.” “Don’t worry,” Nilsson quickly assured him. “These are cheap pearls, bought from your very ordinary Vienna fees.”

Although her repertoire extended to many other dramatic operas, among them
Turandot, Fidelio, Salome,
and
Aida,
and she retired from the operatic stage in 1982, Birgit Nilsson is still considered one of the greatest Wagnerian sopranos of all time. The Met staged two different productions of
Tristan und Isolde
especially for her (she also was given new productions at 20 other opera houses around the world), and her Wagner recordings remain as peerless trophies of an exceptional life in music. So does the Birgit Nilsson Scholarship Fund, which the soprano established more than 15 years ago at the Manhattan School of Music to encourage the development of future operatic greats.

“Singing is very simple,” says Joan Sutherland. “It’s basically breathing, supporting and projecting.” Now we know. Certainly, singing came naturally enough to Joan (1926–). At age three, she would sit on the piano bench and imitate her mother’s exercises and songs. “Mother cared nothing for a career,” the soprano recalled many years later, “she just loved to sing. Before studying as a soprano, I learnt from her many mezzo arias, and ballads with simple melodies that have a firm place in my heart.”

Mrs. Sutherland did not feel that Joan (or any youngster) should have formal lessons before age 18, so she gave her daughter piano lessons instead, and let her sing just for fun—and to entertain family and friends, which the child did on every available occasion. Finally, her 18th birthday at hand, Joan applied to and was accepted by the Sydney Conservatory, where she made her debut as Dido in a student production of Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas
, and also started hanging out every so often with a young piano student named Richard Bonynge. In 1951 she moved to London, where she completed her training at the Royal College of Music, spending time every so often with Richard Bonynge, who had followed her to England. They were married three years later.

For the next four decades, Sutherland and Bonynge were a devoted team, professionally as well as personally. He conducted most of her performances and recordings, researched long-forgotten roles that suited her voice and temperament, and served her variously as vocal coach, accompanist, and morale-booster.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
To his great credit, Bonynge was never upset to stand more than a little bit in the tall Sutherland shadow. “Let’s face it,” he told an interviewer, “I’ve worked all my life to make her sing well, so why the hell am I going to get into a tizz if she gets more applause than I do? It’s the nature of things. Down through the centuries, people remember great prima donnas, not their conductors.”

Starting out at the Royal Opera House in the small part of the First Lady in Mozart’s
The Magic Flute
, Sutherland was quite a few years away from her status as the first lady of opera, or “La Stupenda,” as her fans would dub her. Larger roles followed that 1952 debut, including Aida, Desdemona, and Eva (in
Die Meistersinger
), but then, feeling that her talents were not being used to best advantage, Bonynge began steering Sutherland away from dramatic repertory and toward the bel canto heroines that up to then had been the magical province of Maria Callas. Sutherland’s voice blossomed in this new territory, expanding to a three-octave range and gaining new and incredible facility in scales, trills, and high-flying coloratura.

It all came together with a 1959 production of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor
. Maria Callas herself went backstage to congratulate the new star, and Sutherland’s Lucia went on to international acclaim at La Scala, the Met, and opera houses everywhere. Dozens of other operatic portrayals—from Mozart to Wagner—along with concert appearances in everything from Handel’s
Messiah
to the Verdi
Requiem
, established her reputation as one of the most versatile of singers; her 30 starring years on stage made the Sutherland career one of the longest in the modern era. In 1979, Queen Elizabeth placed the soprano’s name on the New Year’s Honors List, conferring upon her the highest title the crown had to offer: Dame Commander of the British Empire. And so it was Dame Joan Sutherland who into her sixties continued to dazzle audiences with her deep musical understanding and peerless vocal pyrotechnics.

Back home in Sydney, Joan Sutherland said farewell to opera with a 1990 performance of Meyerbeer’s
Les Huguenots
, then settled into comfortable retirement, cooking, gardening, and—who knows?—just possibly easing into a new career, since she has been tapped for a speaking role in an Australian film. Through it all, Dame Joan has maintained a personal modesty quite at odds with her worldwide celebrity. “I’m just an ordinary human being,” she said during the intermission of a televised concert with Luciano Pavarotti, “that has been given a really rather wonderful voice.”

When “Beverly Sills is a Good High” buttons were sold as a fundraiser for the New York City Opera, it was both a witty slogan and an apt description of the irrepressible talents, effervescent personality and lofty accomplishments of this native New Yorker. The child of an insurance salesman from Rumania and a musical mother from Odessa, this operatic diva-to-be (1929–) began her career as “the most beautiful baby of 1932,” singing on the radio under the name of “Bubbles” at the age of three. The next year she joined a Saturday morning kid’s show, at seven she sang in a movie, and at ten was a regular on a radio serial, “Our Gal Sunday.” Later came a commercial for Rinso White, a singing stint during the early days of TV, and finally, at the venerable age of 18, her operatic debut as Frasquita in
Carmen
.

The major turning point in her life came when Sills joined New York City Opera in 1955, singing Rosalinda in Strauss’
Die Fledermaus
. From then on, right up until her retirement at an October 27, 1980 gala in her honor (the last aria she sang that night was Rosalinda’s, from
Die Fledermaus
), Sills was the busiest soprano of that famous company, breaking out of traditional repertory to star in Douglas Moore’s
The Ballad of Baby Doe
and Luigi Nono’s avant garde
Intolleranza
, bringing Handel’s
Giulio Cesare
out of mothballs into modern popularity, and crowning her career with unforgettable portrayals of the three Donizetti Queens: Maria Stuarda, Anna Bolena, and Elizabeth in
Roberto Devereux
. It was in another operatic rarity, Rossini’s
The Siege of Corinth
, that Beverly Sills made her La Scala debut in 1969, and in which she took her first bows at the Metropolitan nine years later.

She starred in more standard fare too, of course, including Lucia, Manon, Aida, and all three heroines in
The Tales of Hoffmann
. She once sang 54 Violettas (in
La Traviata
) within a little over two months, and her gift for rollicking comedy was well displayed in such favorites as Mozart’s
Abduction from the Seraglio
and Donizetti’s
Daughter of the Regiment
. Hubert Saal, longtime music editor of
Newsweek
, dubbed her “a female Buster Keaton” in those roles, going on to note that “the mainspring of her career has been her belief that opera is drama, not a showcase for beautiful voices. Hers, though, was among the most beautiful. Her range was enormous, all gold at the top and silver at the bottom, combining lightness of texture of lustrous shades of color with great strength. It has been a voice that can raise the roof or break your heart.”

Another vital element in the Sills success story was her palpable pleasure in performance. “I found singing such a joyous experience that I couldn’t wait to get on the stage,” she told her Met Opera colleague Jerome Hines. “This joyfulness, and my need to communicate with people, these are my two strongest points. I’ve always been a people person. I love people, I like to be with people, so when I got on stage, I was home free.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
In addition to her opera and concert stints, Beverly Sills was a frequent TV visitor. Joining Johnny Carson for a comedy sketch, sharing witty conversations with Barbara Walters, and lifting her voice in duet with such other TV notables as Dinah Shore, Danny Kaye, and Miss Piggy.

When Beverly Sills stepped back from performing in 1980, it was not to slip into restful retirement. Even before her last note was sung, she had signed on as general director of New York City Opera, a position that allowed her to bring a raft of superb young American singers into the ranks and pull the company back from near bankruptcy to financial good health. Later, she was a hit on radio talk shows, produced and emceed television specials, undertook a whole series of philanthropic fundraising efforts, and last time we checked, was happily busy as Chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

“Beverly Sills has captured with her voice every note of human feeling,” said Jimmy Carter at the 1980 ceremonies at which she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom; “she has touched and delighted audiences throughout the world as a performer, as a recording artist, and now as a producer—and of all her arts she is truly a master.”